Why Milk Chocolate Is Better Than Dark Chocolate

Go out and buy a bar of milk chocolate and a bar of dark chocolate. Now find a four year old kid. No, seriously. Take your time. I'll wait.

Hand that precocious toddler a square of dark chocolate and tell him, "I got this chocolate for you." Then watch his cherubic lips purse up like a fist as he chokes down the dark chocolate and shoots you a wounded, hateful glare. That look of betrayal and horror, that look of disgust--that's dark chocolate.

It's chocolate for grown-ups. It's the vegetable of the candy world. Like black and white television shows, foreign films with subtitles, or the plays of Bertold Brecht, dark chocolate is this sophisticated thing that we feel we have to like. But deep down, there's no joy in dark chocolate. The difference between milk chocolate and dark chocolate is like the difference between macaroni and cheese and a wedge of ripe taleggio.

Think about some of the reasons people like dark chocolate. It's healthier, because it has antioxidants. Boooring! That's not a reason to like food. That's a reason to like vitamins. Or maybe dark chocolate is better because it has more flavor. If that's so, than why are Hershey's Special Dark miniatures the last thing left in a bag of Halloween candy? Even if you genuinely like dark chocolate, you have to admit: dark chocolate is a bummer, man.

Milk chocolate is a simple, straight-forward, big ol' block of fun. It's kinda dumb and likeable, the way golden retrievers are. Milk chocolate gets along with others. Like peanut butter and nuts and rice krispies and even raisins, which I usually eat around (unless they're covered with chocolate). Milk chocolate is not pretending to be something else. It's essentially a vehicle for two of the best things in life, fat and sugar, with a little bit of cocoa solids in there to provide some flavor and color. It says, "Here I am, inner four-year-old! Remove my foil and let me melt all over your hands!"

Complain all you want that milk chocolate is déclassé, or boring, with its one-note of cloying sweetness and creamy thickness on your tongue. I'll still take a mediocre bar of milk chocolate over some six-dollar bitter, brittle, dusty bar of dark chocolate any day of the week.